It was the smiles Harold Longanecker missed most. Driving down the
main street of his hometown at night and seeing families Christmas
shopping under the bright holiday decorations along Sherman Way in
Reseda.

Maybe he was just being nostalgic or just reliving the fond
memories of a man getting on in years, but everyone seemed to have more
holiday cheer back then -- even the businessmen.

More smiles, Longanecker told the Reseda Neighborhood Council in a
January e-mail after another dark holiday season on Sherman Way -- the
26th in a row.

Those lights and decorations just seemed to make people feel good
and lift spirits, Longanecker wrote. Maybe if they came back, so would
the smiles. Who knows? It was worth a thought.

``I didn't think I'd hear back from them, but I got a
call asking me to come to their next meeting to discuss it with
them,'' Longanecker said Friday.

So that's what the 61-year-old mailroom employee at Lockheed
Federal Credit Union did. It was a new holiday season, and he was full
of optimism again. It felt good after what he had been through the past
10 years.

Cancer took his prostate in 1995, and his mother died in 1996. Then
in 1998, he was downsized out of the mailroom clerk job he had held for
19 years in the insurance industry.

He bounced among some part-time jobs for the next couple of years
looking for steady work. But nobody wanted to hire full time an aging
mailroom clerk in questionable health.

Then his luck changed. One of the bosses at Lockheed's credit
union in Burbank, where Longanecker had worked as a temp, wanted to know
if he'd like to come back full time. It was the best Christmas
present he had gotten in a long, long time, Longanecker said.

``Until I got that job, I was pretty depressed, but once I got back
in the swing of things, I took a look at Reseda and realized how dreary Sherman Way was without those lit holiday decorations we used to have
up.''

After listening to Longanecker, the 15-member Reseda Neighborhood
Council agreed. It spent $16,000 to buy and install 40 lighted holiday
decorations, which now line Sherman Way's main shopping district
from Lindley to Wilbur avenues.

The council's chairman, Walt Sweeney, says that when the
holiday lights were turned on after Thanksgiving, his telephone started
ringing and e- mails began arriving by the dozens.

``Reseda has 72,000 people, and it seems everyone who has lived
here a long time remembers those old holiday decorations with
fondness,'' Sweeney said.

``The feedback welcoming them back has been overwhelming. I even
got an e-mail from a woman now living in Boise, Idaho, who moved in 1995
because she said Reseda was going to pot.

``She was back last week visiting friends, saw the holiday
decorations back up, and wanted us to know we were moving in the right
direction, bringing back a community spirit.